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World-wide, crops irrigated by ditches use 70% or more of available water. Changing to dry-land crops and sprinkler or drip irrigation can reduce agricultural water use by 60 to 90%.

What is the factual basis for this statement? Sure you can switch to dry land but with a corresponding drop in production. True - ditches are not the most efficient, but 60 - 90% reduction in water use?!!

I read that statement as saying that one can choose to grow crops that need less water - for example millet or sorghum instead of rice. This wouldn't necessarily reduce the profuction because some crops are more efficient at utilizing water than others. This would certainly reduce the water demand but I think farmers would only choose to do this if there was an incentive. The incentive could be due either to government policy or to high water prices.

However, it would probably be easier to change the irrigation systems to reduce water than to change the crops.

Many authorities say that the way to stop these abuses is simply to charge users the true costs of the water they use. Almost all areas subsidize farm and industrial uses of water by over-charging residential uses.

"In the Middle East, many of the wars, notably the Six-Day War, have been disputes over water. These are expected to escalate as industry and population increase in the region. In areas where law is less respected than in the U.S., we can expect either violence, or poverty."
The last sentence appears highly Americocentric, and perhaps biased, thus violating the doctrine that the point of view should be neutral. -- Lord Emsworth 01:31, Dec 19, 2003 (UTC)

What is the Rocky Mountain Trench??? I googled it and came up with a valley system extending from northern Montana north to the Yukon. Dam & flood it -- sounds like a pipe dream to me. Got references? Maybe a NAWAPA website? --Vsmith 20:42, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Suggest second sentence redundant... this is covered at Water#Water.27s_effect_on_life. Believe the phrase "recreational and environmental" better rendered as "cultural, recreational and aesthetic" The environmental link here goes to a blanket statement of what the environment is... but not its significance to people. This allows managable categories within which possible water use conflicts can be put. Cultural allows a broader discussion. eg Indian practices re Ganges and other festivities around the world Recreational should be obvious... but could include for example, restriction of use on house boat owners and skiers using a reservoir vs irrigators. Aesthetic. Preserving for posterity, for its own value. The picture in the section Environmental can hardly be a "natural wetland" with a house and clipped lawn to the left, however it can be aesthetic.

I think a large part of the second half of Water might be more usefully placed in water resources... leaving the water page to define the more physico chemical aspects - don't forget to check out Hydrosphere and Biogeochemistry

Thoughts while im here... might help to have salination. Ie where irrigation water is made salty by one set of users before passing it on to the next set... either thru irrigation practices or agricultural practices. More needs to be said about industrial contamination and disposal.... water reuse and recyling. Will try to get back to these points. Is this discussion dead? Ribosome 16:20, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm currently enrolled in an environmental politics course; I'm going to try to dig up some resources from that course on water in the developing world. It's an enormous problem there; this page needs more international focus. Take a look at this brochure from the 2003 "International Year of Freshwater."

I just added {{NPOV}} to the top of this article. Sections headers like "The problem" and "The result" are giant red flags. Mainly, though, none of the claims are attributed. For example, "One part of the solution is conservation": says who? Anyway, I don't have time to work on fixing it now; perhaps someone else will come along and do it. dbenbenn | talk 14:20, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the "red flags". Looking at the history, I see the article has retained its basic form, with these headings, since its inception. The time is ripe for the equilibrium to be punctuated. Who's with me? Daniel Collins 15:08, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

I guess someone should come up with a new outline. If we keep the theme of the first sentence that "Water Resources are sources of water beneficial to humans", then we could go:

Sources of Fresh Water

Surface Water

Sub-Surface Water

Desalinization

Threats to Sources of Fresh Water

Depletion of Underground Acquifers

Polution

Uses of Fresh Water

Agricultural

Industrial

Household

Areas with an Imbalance between Supply and Demand

Methods to Increase Supply

Methods to Decrease Demand

Dometic

I'm just doing this to get things moving. Feel free to do what you want to it. Toiyabe 23:30, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

Nice. I would be inclined to actually start a new entry on water resources planning or management, which would deal with the last three points you make, but not until we have this one down. Daniel Collins 00:35, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

OK, I made a first revision. The revision was very lossy. If folks like the direction I went, then we should try to get more information back out of the original. I think this page went wrong because it started out as a "Drinking water" article. Thats what all the interwiki links were to. I ommited those links, so someone should create a "drinking water" article and add those links back in. Toiyabe 18:37, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Great job! The direction is fine with me. I wish I had time currently to contribute. We can bring back elements of the ommitted text in steps - in essence, it is valuable. I would say the NPOV tag can go. What do you think Dbenbenn? Daniel Collins 18:41, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

If the world's supply of water was 1 cup, the amount of fresh water available to us would be 1.5 mL, or 3/4 of a thimble full. Any chance of someone setting up a photo of this comparison for this article? --brian0918™ 29 June 2005 02:41 (UTC)

How about a bucket (10 liter or 2.5 gallons) full of water and a glass (300 ml = 1 1/4 Cup (unit)) of drinking water on the rocks (2/3 ice)? Common Man 09:45, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

There are a number of journal articles on the use of salicornia and aquaculture to green costal deserts adn make cooking oil and animal feed. There is however, no wikipedia article. Would such information belong here, or elsewhere? SiDNEy 21:02, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

It would belong elsewhere but a link to it belongs here. Fred Bauder 22:41, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

The water conflict section is considerably lacking. I'm going to try and add to it in the next couple of days. First off though, I have a problem with 'Well-poisoning' being included as an example of conflict over water, considering that this is now regarded as more of an accusation than a true conflict over water. As well, the root of the problem seems to be anti-semitism, and not water per se. Also, I'm thinking of changing the Water and Conflict section to Water and Security, so that other security issues, such as threats to health and livelihoods can be added here as well. I can then link main articles on sanitation and drinking water, for example. Any thoughts?

When citing my sources, I realized that most of the refernces already on this page do not actually refer to specific areas of text. I'm not sure what to do about this. I will continue working on the article and try to fix up some of the references if I can. Any advice would be appreciated.

You can add {{citations}} if you like, perhaps in the refs section. Richard001

I added a reference related to the global distribution of the world's fresh water but I am unsure if I did it adequately. It is based on the text posted on http://www.greenfacts.org/en/water-resources/index.htm#2 which is in turn based on the 2006 report "Water, A shared Responsibility, The United Nations Water Development report 2" which quotes Data from Shiklomanov and Rodda, 2003. StephanieM (talk) 16:25, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Too short. 3 paragraphs would be a good length for a 30kb article. Someone coming here should be able to get a good grasp of the issue without having to read past the lead. Richard001 01:33, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

While this is an interesting and promising article, I have delisted it as a Good article because I believe it does not meet the current GA standards. Specifically, the article lead does not comply with the guidance on WP:LEAD: it should not be an introduction to, but a summary of, the article, and should mention all major points covered by the body. In addition, it contains significant gaps in its referencing and would benefit from a copyedit (particularly with a view to merging all those one-sentence paragraphs into the surrounding prose). Once these issues have been addressed, please feel free to renominate the article at WP:GAN. If you feel I have made an unfair or incorrect assessment, the article can be listed at WP:GAR for scrutiny from other GA reviewers. Regards, EyeSereneTALK 11:32, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

There are several means of obtaining "fresh" or potable (fit for human consumption) water from readily available non-potable sources. This subject becomes particularly interesting in the instance of coastal populations.

These two methods are desalinization and sewage reclamation (generally combined with natural percolation from a lake bed or drain field to the local aquifer). I got to this article in a search for an economic comparison of these two means -- which, it seems to me, definitely should appear in this article.

For those of you who are squeamish about sewage reclamation -- you might NOT want to read on ....

If you think about it, a human being breathes a host of dangerous chemical pollutants and some biopollutants during respiration, which are then (if not already absorbed in the lungs) expelled from the lungs into the gastrointestinal system, where they JOIN the nice, "clean" bottled water which he has been swilling all day at great cost. Water from a source involving sewage reclamation is thus NOT a cause for knee-jerk, reckless, irresponsible and emotional repulsion or concern.

I say "clean" above, since some bottled waters are not that clean at all -- it turns out that some plastic bottles are sources of chemical contamination. . —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.63.237.3 (talk) 14:15, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I would have thought that a more interesting way of comparing these two technologies would be to look at their environmental cost in terms of energy, the production of which itself uses a large amount of resources (including water in most cases).Jimjamjak (talk) 14:51, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

"Sub-Surface water, or groundwater, is fresh water located in the pore space of soil and rocks. It is also water that is flowing within aquifers below the water table." This definition is not clear. As far as I understand, groundwater is fresh water that is located in pores and fissures of rocks, soil and sediments. This is the case whether or not the water flows i.e. in permeable rocks where there is a hydrostatic gradient, or in non-permeable porous rocks (such as some clay-rich sediments, which may have high porosity but low permeability). Jimjamjak (talk) 15:15, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Water may also be obtained from animals, plants. See drinking water article. Also add some schematics, pictures from that article here. Also add info how water can be obtained from these places (eg by wells, solar stills, ...) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.64.197.28 (talk) 14:00, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

When someone gets a chance, could they load up the IWMI image concerning water scarcity across the world, and remove the IWMI watermark and labeling. I'd do it but my GIMP is all funky right now. Maybe also change the font or something. This is a great image and I don't think any of us want to risk losing it to protocol. Then someone can go ahead and remove the speedy tag. If you've got the time, you could also change the colors too. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.138.64.212 (talk) 17:25, 1 April 2009 (UTC) poo70.26.155.52 (talk) 00:47, 4 November 2009 (UTC)